Everyone knows that a sharp pencil is essential for basic arithmetic because you need it to write something down and calculate the answers.
Speed affects your bakery’s user experience, how much you charge them, and how many clients you see daily. There are two main types of search results, paid and organic. You need to pay attention to Google ranking factors and SEO optimization of your website if you want your website to appear in organic search results.
Everyone knows that page speed is essential. A confirmed Google ranking factor for desktop and mobile devices affects user experience and can directly impact your bottom line. No one likes to wait.
And the faster you can deliver your web content, the happier users will be. Speed is also essential in this market environment because of usability and search ranking signals; faster website speed can increase sales.
A slow site is bad for business and your return on investment. You must change that if your WordPress website needs to be faster. Follow this short guide if you are wondering how to speed up WordPress.
WordPress is a top-rated platform that runs over 43.3% of the Internet. While that’s great, it also means that thousands of themes, plugins, and other technologies have to coexist. For the standard WordPress user, this can become inconvenient when their website hits a bottleneck, and they need help knowing why or where to start looking for problems!
Accelerating WordPress performance as well as enhancing WordPress can be a complicated company. The trouble is that there is no one-size-fits-all service. There are approaches you can use to fix speed concerns on your site, yet you must locate the best solution.
That’s why we’ve written this article. It is a collection of ideas on how to speed up your WordPress website and make it faster.
Why is the speed of a website essential?
The loading speed of a website is an essential factor for several reasons. Slow loading times are incredibly frustrating for a visitor. It irritates him and can cause him to abandon the page. Even if a client stays, he may lose interest and not buy.
Any business that offers information needs to provide that information as quickly as possible. A slow loading speed means that the user will lose interest.
Many factors affect the loading speed of a website, including the size of the website, the number of requests made to the server, and the type of content loaded,
And the server’s response time depends on what kind of theme and web hosting you use. All these factors can affect the user experience and, in some cases, even lead to loss of revenue or customers.
That’s why ensuring your website loads as fast as possible is essential. Several ways to improve website speed include optimizing images, minimizing CSS and JavaScript, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
Google attaches great importance to loading speed and has made it a ranking factor. A recent study showed that 2.5% (about 40%) of website traffic would leave you if your website more remarkable more than 4 seconds to load. A study has shown that a one-second delay in page response time can lead to a 7% loss in conversions.
That means that a one-second delay in page response can lead to a loss of almost 100 sales per month! If you plan to build a website, choosing a web hosting company with optimized servers for fast loading speeds is essential.
While there is no magic number for internet site loading speed, websites should generally load in less than two seconds. Anything beyond that can lead to user frustration, which could cause them to leave your site.
A WordPress website with few plugins and a theme that does only the bare minimum can be faster than a website with ten improperly coded plugins and a style that does way too much.
So if you want to enhance the performance of your website, you need to check out your filling speed initially. It can make all the distinctions to your service. There are lots of several why you should be worried as well as many more that would undoubtedly fret you:
- First, it affects the user experience of your website. If your internet site takes too long to load, visitors will likely get frustrated and leave before they even see what you offer.
- Second, the loading speed of your website is a factor in your search engine ranking.
- Google and other search engines prefer websites that load quickly. So if your website is slow, you’ll be disadvantaged in search engine results.
Ultimately, fast-loading internet sites convert better than slow-loading websites. If your website takes less time, prospective customers will likely give up and go to a competitor’s internet site.
So, as you can see, your site’s loading speed is essential for several reasons. To improve your website’s performance, you should focus on increasing its loading speed.
The loading speed of a website is the most critical element for users to judge the quality of a website. That is important for search engine optimization because users coming through search engines get frustrated when loading is delayed. For this reason, website owners invest more in improving the loading speed of their websites.
It is also essential to increase the user experience for all users. That’s why website owners are now looking for ways to improve the loading speed of their websites, and that’s one of the reasons you are here reading and jumping around these WordPress Speed Guide articles.
How to test website speed and improve loading time?
Have users complained about the loading time of your website? You may be losing paying customers or leads because of your website speed.
That’s why website speed needs to be Google’s #1 ranking factor, not just #10. (If you need an instant boost to your website speed, check out the fastest WordPress theme, “Astra.” If you use an Astra theme, your WordPress speed will instantly shoot from the bottom to the top.
Page speed is critical because it directly affects your ranking. Google considers a 2-second delay as “slow” and will consider this when ranking.
First and foremost, you need to know if your site is as fast as it should be. Keep in mind that this speed can vary from site to site and depends on several factors:
- Size of the site
- How many requests it generates.
- Whether a page is cached or not
- WordPress page types (static or dynamic).
To check the loading time of a website, three different devices are made used by specialists and also organizations on the net:
You can test the filling time of your site with Google PageSpeed. It is a cost-free online internet site rate tester. You can see the packing time of your website on different smartphones, tablet computers, laptops, or desktop gadgets.
Mobile speed is more important than ever. Google’s search results are now indexed according to the mobile-first principle. Therefore, optimizing your WordPress website for mobile viewing should be one of the initial things you do to improve your website rankings.
Your goal is to reach 100 / 100 for mobile usability and speed so that you are fully compatible with the new changes from the SEO side (and meet Google’s vision of an ideal website).
(e.g., Think With Google), and check out the mobile version of your main web vital report in Google Search Console. Learn if you require to enhance points like LCP, CLS, or TBT on your mobile WordPress internet site.
WordPress website types: Static or dynamic
Before we dive in-depth into WordPress speed optimization, it’s essential to understand that not all WordPress sites are the same. In real life, there are two types of websites: dynamic and static. Dynamic websites require the use and execution of scripts and dynamic languages,
Static websites do not (HTML scripts, for example, do not change every time the page loads and only need to be processed once). That is why it is so essential to understand the classification of a website because it can make all the difference when you apply specific techniques to increase the speed of your WordPress website.
With WordPress websites, there are two main types: static and dynamic. Static websites are usually created with HTML and CSS and stay mostly the same over time. On the other hand, dynamic websites are created using PHP and MySQL. They are much more flexible and easier to update.
So which type of WordPress website should you choose? That depends on your needs. A static website might be a good choice if you want a simple website that doesn’t need to be updated often. However, a dynamic website would be a better choice if you need a website that can be easily updated and changed.
1. Static websites
Static websites are the simplest type of website and the easiest to create. A static website is created using HTML code stored in a file on a web server. The content of each page of a fixed website is fixed and does not transform unless the HTML code is manually edited and the adjustments are conserved in the documents.
Static content refers to websites that do not have dynamic and real-time features. Examples of static content include websites with single images and informational material such as small business websites, blogs, newspapers, or mailing list archives.
That is significant because many requests are served directly from the server’s cache. That gives them lightning-fast access times. It also means that fewer database calls are required, resulting in the fast performance of web services and data analytics. Don’t worry; we’ll explain how caches work in more detail below.
2. Dynamic website
A vibrant site is an internet site that can be updated from one or more areas. It is “dynamic” because the content can be transformed without a different view from a webmaster or other programmers.
In the past, vibrant sites were frequently created utilizing CGI and Perl scripts. Modern dynamic websites use technologies such as AJAX and Flash to keep the website fresh and interactive. A content management system can also create these websites quickly and easily.
A dynamic website is constantly changing and evolving. It is produced with a content administration system (CMS) that permits the owner or administrator to make site adjustments without editing the code straight. Developing a dynamic website is often more complex and expensive than a static website, but it provides a much richer experience for users.
On the other hand, we have highly dynamic websites, such as those in eCommerce (WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads), community, or membership, that are updated frequently. That means that the data on these WordPress sites frequently changes (server transactions happen every few minutes or even every second).
Not all requests can be offered directly from the cache and require additional server resources and database queries.
Two types of dynamic websites often have a large number of visitors. One type is an informational or business-related WordPress site, which contains a lot of information. Visitors usually stay on it for 5-10 minutes before moving to the following site on their list.
The second type is what we call “dynamic.” On these sites, it’s common for visitors to spend hours completing an online course.
19 ways to speed up WordPress performance
1. Choose a high-performance WordPress hosting
Your hosting provider is one of the most critical factors that affect the speed of your site since a WordPress host is a company that supplies you with the devices to build a functional as well as a dynamic internet site.
You want to work on your blog while you are away from home or the office. You can do that because it will always be accessible no matter where you are. A WordPress hoster provides space for all the data you need for your website – images, videos, content, etc.
The speed at which your internet site loads dramatically depends on the web host you select. A free or cheap web hosting service may seem like a good idea initially, but if your website is heavily trafficked, they usually don’t offer the best loading times. Let us explain why:
Shared hosting is comparable to carpooling. You remain in a group with other people who have their companies, so you can’t be sure what they are doing or exactly how well your vehicle (server) is running at any given time. That indicates you are either stuck awaiting someone to complete their job or, perhaps even worse:
Suppose you consume all the resources prematurely, yet one more person doesn’t. In that case, it can be challenging to drive (serve demands) to the end of your drive (you had enough resources allocated for an hour, but someone else consumed fifty percent of that time).
Fortunately, the web hosting industry has evolved rapidly technologically, and WordPress hosting provider prices have dropped over time. Today, you can buy dedicated WordPress hosting from DreamHost, Bluehost, Hostinger, Cloudways, and Green and Geeks.
And at Amazon Web Services or even Google Compute Engine at a very reasonable price. However, setting up these servers can be difficult, as you need to configure and set up the server from scratch.
2. Use a lightweight WordPress Framework Work
WordPress themes with many dynamic elements, slides, and shiny objects can be visually appealing. However, it’s important to remember that while all of these things are important, they can also affect the performance of your blog.
So be sure to check out WordPress theme demos to find out if the potential purchase is worth your hard-earned money and the effort of optimizing everything for the theme before you buy.
No one likes to buy a washed-up horse that runs just fine but can’t keep up with the competition. Even though free WordPress themes are free, they need to be built as premium themes.
You should always check the quality of the content before choosing a theme. Regarding design and implementation, there is much room for improvement in some of the projects you come across during your research.
Always check out the reviews of other people who may have had similar issues as you!
So how do you know which provider to choose? Usually, we recommend that you follow the adhering to pointers:
A WordPress motif that is lightweight, fast, and also comes with only the features your website needs, and not other bulky features (and no more than that).
WordPress themes like Astra are more feature-rich, but you can disable features that aren’t needed, which instantly speeds up the page load time.
While the most cost-effective method is undoubtedly to start from scratch, you can find and install existing themes like the Astra theme for free. There are many available on various marketplaces for any business, or you can look at free themes created by WordPress itself in its directory.
The most effective choice below is to utilize lightweight styles. One remedy (which also is one of the most popular) is to utilize the default WordPress styles.
3. Try to avoid page builder
If you are using the Astra theme, it is essential to know that it can work with other plugins like Elementor and Beaver Builder Page Builders, as Astra has an in-build-and-drop interface. Astra requires utilizing their web page builder plugin to utilize one of their internet site collection motifs.
Here are some suggestions to bear in mind when making use of a material management system:
- Make sure the plugin works with your WordPress theme.
- If you are using a theme that is not compatible with the plugin, you may require purchasing a different theme that works.
- Some plugins are resource extensive, so make sure your WordPress organizing can manage the lots.
- Using page builders can sometimes be tricky, so reading documentation and watching tutorials before you begin is essential.
- Make sure you have a backup plan if your page builder plugin fails.
Some page builder plugins can affect your site’s load time because the extra code that comes with it, by default, is needed to make things work for the user without coding. A lot of magic happens this way!
Fortunately, many of these devices can be tailored with code to make particular points – and also advise testing the site before and after mounting a web page builder to be sure!
The terrific aspect of Astra is that it’s been a trustworthy motif for our entire customer base, who have been dealing with us for two years. None have ever needed to deal with any incompatibility issues.
We also use third-party resources and original plugins and themes, but none of them have ever caused any issues – and that’s a testament to the overall performance of the theme so far!
4. Install a caching plugin
There are different types of website caching, each with its advantages and disadvantages.
The simplest form of caching is client-side caching, where frequently accessed files are stored on the user’s computer. That can reduce page load times and result in outdated information being displayed if the user’s cache needs to be cleaned regularly.
Server-side caching is much more complex and can take either page caching or database caching. Page caching shops whole pages in a cache, while data source caching shops frequently access data.
Both forms of server-side caching can significantly reduce page load times but are also more challenging to set up and maintain.
Lastly, the content distribution network (CDN) caches shop data on web servers worldwide. That can enhance page packing times for users far from the internet site’s server, but it can likewise be much more costly to establish and keep.
If your hosting provider doesn’t offer cache, you can set up your own with a standalone caching plugin.
- WP Rocket (paid)
- Cache Enabler (free of charge)
- W3 Total Cache (free)
Using such a tool and advanced caching systems like Varnish, you can make your site load quicker and ultimately quicken WordPress substantially.
5. Enable lazy loading of images and videos
If you have a lot of images, you should consider careless loading. That is an optimization strategy with lots of noticeable content but hold-ups downloading and making material that appears below the fold.
Make sure everything your customers require to comprehend your item is in their field of vision, and just let them scroll down when it makes good sense (e.g., similar products, related products).
Likewise, make sure that no slow-loading elements (e.g., videos) are put above the layer, as this will backfire if site visitors do not wait on these components to lots before scrolling down! Hyperlinks to even more details about careless filling images/indicators/progress should be offered as a reference in this context.
If you have a lot of images, consider lazy loading. That is an optimization technique that loads visible content but delays downloading and rendering content that appears below the fold.
Lazy loading starts with images and videos. It’s a performance technique for the backend of a website to send as little data as possible over the network and reduce bandwidth time, enhancing page speed (in some cases by more than half! ).
WordPress 5.5+ allows “lazy loading” of images, not videos.
The global developer has released several extensions for WordPress that make optimization faster and easier. Just download and install the extensions and use them to optimize everything from tweets to entire landing pages! With a simple couple of clicks, you can easily optimize your images.
If you choose an image compression plugin, it must be able to compress and optimize images externally through its servers. The plugins listed above are capable of doing this; we use and recommend them for the best image optimization performance and to help reduce size and dimensions:
6. Image optimization is proper
Optimizing images for the web will help you save some loading time. That may not be a priority for everyone, but it should be! It is fast and also simple, so there’s no reason why every website should not enhance its images.
The right image size for your website not only looks better aesthetically but also loads faster for your visitors. That is important for all types of websites!
Optimizing images is a beautiful thing to make your pages more appealing because it doesn’t negatively impact your website. We know how important load times are to the user experience, so you can’t skip this step!
In general, lazy-loading images positively impacts load times because images that the user does not trigger an additional request for them, as would otherwise be the case.
According to the HTTP Archive (as of August 2019), images account for an average of 34% of the total weight of a web page. That’s greater than twice the dimension of JavaScript and also CSS combined. So after video clips – much more demanding to maximize – images are undoubtedly the top place you ought to start!
7. Reduce the size of your code
If you’re planning to optimize your site, Google PageSpeed Insights will likely tell you to reduce the size of your CSS and JS files. That means you can improve your website’s loading speed by reducing the time and resources it takes to load these files.
By minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript resources, we can save bandwidth for page load times. Minification occurs during the handling of automated scripts to eliminate unneeded personalities, such as comments and rooms, from the resource code of these data while they remain in advancement.
Usually, these characters are instrumental because they provide more helpful information during development, but they are useless when rendering a web page by the browser.
8. Combine CSS and JavaScript files
From the efficiency perspective, it is far better to concatenate them instead of inlining them, yet it would damage the modularity and reusability of your code. We need to combine them primarily because of the blended material problem. The Content Security Policy, a new W3C web standard, is adopted in modern browsers.
That would cause problems if inline JavaScript were inserted into the HTML document header, which is not allowed by CSP. Therefore, it is better to include the files as standard HTML and then load the CSS selectively on the page.
To determine if a particular website uses HTTP/2, you can use KeyCDN’s tester. Either your website indicates that it supports it or it does not. If it does not, we recommend combining the CSS and JavaScript files on your website, as this will improve your website’s load time and security.
CSS and JavaScript files can be combined to reduce the number of HTTP requests made when a web page loads. That can improve page performance as fewer files need to be downloaded. In addition, bandwidth can be reduced because the files are smaller when combined.
You can use a device like Gulp or Grunt to combine CSS and JavaScript files. These devices incorporate your documents into a file. After that, reference this file in your HTML code, and the internet browser tons it as a single file.
9. Disable the plugins you don’t use
If you’re utilizing WordPress for your website, try uninstalling plugins you’re not using from the Plugins menu in the WordPress dashboard. You can also disable plugins from your website’s Settings > Write screen to ensure they don’t conflict with other plugins or themes.
You probably have many plugins installed unless you’re running a new WordPress website. Over time, some of them can harm the loading speed of your website. Therefore, you should deactivate and uninstall plugins you don’t need so your website can start with a good climate before installing new ones.
It is essential to keep track of the plugins you use and how they affect a website’s performance. If you are using a plugin, it is probably causing one or more problems.
Delete plugins only after careful consideration if you decide to do so. It’s best to look for alternative ways to set up third-party services, such as social media scheduling plugins (if you can’t live without them). Also, keep your backups clean by deleting irrelevant files that accumulate in the database over time.
10. Fix mobile layout shifts
Use Google’s Format Shift Debugger to locate mobile format changes. Your result must be less than 0.01, as advised by Google. It’s best to deal with others who can help you recognize inconsistencies so you can alter them by turning out an upgrade or enhancing your internal processes.
11. Use a CDN
CDN represents the material shipment network. A CDN is a team of web servers (also called POPs or factors of presence) around the world developed to host and deliver duplicates of your WordPress website’s fixed (as well as often dynamic) material, such as pictures, CSS, JavaScript, as well as video clip streams.
12. Enable GZIP compression
GZIP is a method of compressing and decompressing data. That makes the files smaller, so you use less bandwidth, and downloads are faster for your users! GZIP compression is available server-side, which means we can enable it for your site.
Compression is compressing a large amount of data into a smaller one. Shrinking files on your hard drive is one way to think of it, for example, if you work locally with documents and spreadsheets. That is very similar to compression on the web: GZIP compression is like opening a can of thickened soup. It helps make your website smaller and easier to download.
13. Clean up the WordPress database
It would be best if you cleaned up your WordPress database to improve performance. Most WordPress-based websites are based on databases and tend to accumulate data junk over time. Most people don’t think to clean up the database as part of their regular maintenance.
Over time, the database will store excess details that are no longer being used. That can affect the performance of your WordPress-based website, as the information will not be retrieved when needed. If you keep the data clean, it can even prevent your website from stopping working correctly.
To optimize your database, you need to rid it of unnecessary data. That will reduce the size of your database and save disk space, both on your server and on backups you have already made.
Getting rid of spam remarks, fake users that are no more energetic, or old web content drafts is an outstanding technique to decrease the size of your data source. Removing unused themes or plugins would also save disk space for better performance.
14. Optimize google fonts
Google font styles are loaded from fonts.googleapis.com, so we can load them asynchronously with javascript. If you’re using an Astrthe theme, you have to go to Customize> Performance, and everything is ready; if not, WP Rocket can also help you optimize Google Fonts and load them locally.
Some themes use Google Fonts, but the great thing about these is that they can be loaded automatically if your site visitor has them installed. If a browser has Google Fontstyles installed and knows that the stylesheet references a font that exists on the browser’s system, it won’t point to Google’s servers,
It will not access Google’s servers but download the fonts directly from its cache. That does not apply if someone has visited your site and downloaded the files to his cache. In this case, he keeps his old fonts until he revisits your site and cache.
15. Enable preloading
Preloading allows you to define necessary resources so web browsers recognize which submits to prioritize for loading. One way to do this is to preload font styles (discovered in your GTmetrix falls chart) or LCP aspects (found in your PageSpeed Insights report).
<link rel=’preload’ href=’/image.png’ as=’image’>
<link rel=’preload’ href=’/font.woff2′ as=’font’ crossorigin>
The <link> element, also known as the preload attribute, can control the prioritization of the browser’s resources by preloading essential resources. One such example is fonts.
You can manually include preload attributes to code by modifying the CSS or HTML file, but including them can get messy and confusing if you need to know what you’re doing.
16. Eliminate rendering-blocking resources
When a web page loads, the browser must render it before it can be displayed to the user. For this purpose, the browser must process the page’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. If there are resources that block rendering (such as JavaScript or CSS files), the browser must wait until they are downloaded and processed before it can render the page.
There are a couple of methods to get rid of render-blocking sources on your site. Initially, you can optimize your CSS code to make it extra efficient. Second, you can utilize CSS media questions to fill the CSS needed for your screen dimension.
17. Keep external scripts to a minimum
External scripts on your web pages increase the overall loading time by a large amount of data. Since Google PageSpeed Insights does not allow the developer to change the recorded data, this is best remedied.
The best way to fix this is by using only a few third-party scripts, including those required on most websites for commenting systems or user monitoring devices (like Google Analytics).
18. Disable Pingbacks and TrackBacks
Disable pingbacks and trackbacks, two of the most annoying things about blogging. When you publish a post, a message usually appears at the bottom of your blog that your post has been linked to or mentioned by another blog, and when you click on it,
When you click on it, you see a list of websites that have posted the same thing, and you can not do anything with it. The only method to eliminate these alerts is to pay or use hacks.
The Pingback, as well as Trackback performance, is a tool that allows customers to alert blog sites when their information has been uploaded.
The problem is that the software program can often be abused by individuals who attempt to utilize it to assault websites with dispersed rejection of service (DDoS) assaults. In this case, the tools are abused to send a flood of information requests to a server, overloading its resources.
Pingbacks and trackbacks take up server resources, affecting your website’s performance as it loads very slowly.
19. Use the latest version of PHP
The latest version of PHP is always the best choice for your website or application. It includes the latest features and security updates, so you can be sure that your website is running the latest version of PHP. Also, using the latest PHP version ensures compatibility with the latest versions of web browsers and other software.
Tip: WP Hive is a Chrome extension that allows you to quickly point out poorly coded plugins on your website that are slowing down your site.
Host your WordPress site on a secure web host with PHP 7.5, which is much faster than PHP 7.1 and is still being tested for compatibility with many of the themes available today.
Some hosts support PHP 8, but it must be compatible with many WordPress websites. We recommend sticking with the tested version, which we know works with the most popular themes.
Summary
Every website is different; you may have additional plugins, a more complicated theme, slower hosting, or more third-party tracking scripts. You never know. We’ll try our best and monitor progress on your behalf even after implementation to better understand what seems to be working for your site and what isn’t.
The most significant benefit of lowering your website load time is that it helps tremendously to improve your visitors’ experience.
Regardless of what device they use to visit your site, lowering load times will keep everyone happy and improve the relationship between you and your users, which will benefit both the short and long term.
We hope this guide has been helpful! We understand that a WordPress website can be overwhelming with so many plugins, themes, and add-on options to choose from daily.
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